Chapter Five #3
She kept herself busy with Henry, who had woken in excellent spirits despite his nightmare.
They spent the morning in the garden, identifying autumn wildflowers and composing a truly terrible poem about a squirrel they observed stealing acorns.
Henry laughed so hard that he got the hiccups, and she had to carry him inside for water.
But beneath her cheerful demeanor, her thoughts kept returning to the night before.
"Miss Harrow?" Henry's voice broke into her thoughts. "You're doing that thing again."
"What thing, sweetheart?"
"The staring-at-nothing thing. You did it when you were thinking about the Duke before."
Eliza felt heat flood her cheeks. "I am not thinking about the Duke."
"You went pink again."
"That's because it's warm in here."
"It's not warm. I'm wearing my coat."
"Then perhaps I'm coming down with a fever."
Henry regarded her with the knowing expression of a child who was not remotely fooled. "You should talk to him," he said, with the simple confidence of someone who believed that all problems could be solved by talking. "He's not as scary as he pretends."
"I'm not afraid of His Grace, Henry."
"Then why don't you talk to him? You talk to everyone else. You even talk to the horses." He frowned. "But you get all quiet when His Grace is around. And you look at him funny."
"I do not look at him funny."
"You do. It's like..." He scrunched up his face, searching for the right words. "It's like you're trying to see something that's hiding. Like when you look for shapes in the clouds."
"I think," she said carefully, "that your brother is a complicated person. And complicated people take time to understand."
"But you're good at understanding people."
"Some people have more walls than others."
"Then knock them down," Henry said it as if it were the simplest thing in the world. "You knocked down mine."
Eliza looked at this small, serious boy who had been a ghost of a child just a month ago. She had knocked down his walls. She had reached through his defenses and found the real child underneath.
But Henry was six. His walls had been built quickly and were relatively new.
The Duke's walls had been under construction for years.
And there was something else—something she couldn't quite admit, even to herself. Breaking down Henry's walls had been safe and professional. The natural duty of a governess toward her charge.
Breaking down Alistair's walls would be something else entirely.
"Come along," she said, standing and brushing off her skirts. "Enough philosophising for one morning. Let's go see if Sovereign is in a pleasant mood today."
Henry brightened immediately. "Can I feed him an apple?"
"If he's feeling friendly. And if Thomas says it's alright."
They walked toward the stables together, Henry's small hand was tucked in hers, and Eliza firmly pushed all thoughts of the Duke from her mind.
She was here for Henry. Only for Henry.
If she repeated it enough times, perhaps she would eventually believe it.
But as they approached the stables, she found herself looking toward the moors, toward the paths she knew Alistair favored for his morning rides.
Looking for a distant figure on a black horse.
Looking for some sign that she was not alone in this bewildering, terrifying thing that was growing between them.
She saw nothing but empty moorland and gray sky.
It's better this way, she told herself. Distance is wise. Boundaries are important. You are a governess, and he is a duke, and nothing good can come of wanting more.
She tried to believe this.
But when she stepped into the dim warmth of the stables and breathed in the familiar scent of hay and horse, she couldn't help thinking of the first time she had met him here. The way he had looked at her hair and the way his voice had softened when he offered her the mare.
He was afraid, she realized. Just as afraid as she was, perhaps more so. He had built his walls so high that he no longer knew how to live without them, and every moment of connection, every crack in the ice, terrified him.
She understood that fear. She had felt it herself, standing on Henry's bed, his hand warm beneath hers. The terror of wanting something she couldn't have. The danger of letting herself hope.
But she had learned, over years of caring for children who had lost parents and homes and everything they knew, that fear was not a reason to retreat. Fear was a reason to be brave.
You're good at finding things, Henry had said. You found me.
Maybe she could find his brother, too.
Maybe it was worth the risk.
She pushed open Sovereign's box and let the magnificent stallion nip at her palm, his dark eyes soft with recognition.
"Your master is a fool," she told him quietly. "But I suspect you already knew that."
Sovereign huffed in what might have been agreement.
"Don't worry," she added, scratching behind his ears. "I'm going to help him. Whether he likes it or not."
The horse made a sound that sounded remarkably like approval now.
And somewhere out on the moors, riding hard through the wind and the cold, Alistair Ravenshaw felt something shift in his chest—some awareness, some presence, some inexplicable sense that something important was happening in his absence.
He told himself it was nothing, and he almost believed it.